Governments all over the developed world are being forced to think again about what services to deliver – and how to collaborate with businesses, charities and citizens.

Effective cross-sector collaboration is a tough nut to crack and well-intentioned efforts are often thwarted by stakeholders who tend naturally to focus on their own interests. Different organisational cultures talk past each other and there can be confusion over delivery.

Research into social innovation shows that the answer lies partly in using an intermediary who can act as the backbone of the effort, co-ordinating stakeholders, pulling the strings of project management and, where necessary, arbitrating points of conflict.

In the US, for example, a non-profit body called Strive has sought to tackle the problem of student underachievement in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky across the education lifecycle from nursery through to secondary school. They realised early on that the complexity of the issue and the diversity of the stakeholders involved meant piecemeal reform would not be enough – only systemic change would turn performance around.

Strive convened a network of 300 leaders from business, government, local schools, universities, non-profit organisations and advocacy groups. Partners were invited to focus on this one specific problem and put the collective agenda ahead of their own, giving Strive access to a hugely powerful group of resources. Strive's annual budget was just $1.5m; the combined budgets of the organisations it was co-ordinating totalled $7bn.

Strive's approach to harnessing this potential revolved around simplicity and transparency. Partner organisations joined networks related to a specific activity, such as pre-school education, and Strive coaches worked with them over a period of years to develop common performance indicators, track progress on a regular basis, share ideas and align with what other networks were doing.

All decisions are made on the basis of a common set of data and evidence that partners have signed up to, reducing the risk of conflict. Additional rigour comes through a collaboration with General Electric, whose quality-improvement process Strive has been adapted for its own use. So far, 34 of the 53 performance indicators that Strive tracks, such as high-school graduation rates and numeracy and literacy test scores, have improved.

The success of examples such as this suggests that public managers will have to be more adept at managing diverse networks of organisations if they are to make progress against social objectives. Hopefully, examples such as Strive will become the rule rather than the exception.